Commerce

Meta announces generative AI features for advertisers

Comment

Image Credits: Meta

Meta today announced an AI Sandbox for advertisers to help them create alternative copies, background generation through text prompts and image cropping for Facebook or Instagram ads.

The first feature lets brands generate different variations of the same copy for different audiences while trying to keep the core message of the ad similar. The background generation feature makes it easier to create different assets for a campaign. Finally, the image cropping feature helps companies create visuals in different aspect ratios for various mediums, such as social posts, stories, or short videos like Reels.

The company said that these features are available to select advertisers at the moment and it will expand access to more advertisers in July.

“Currently, we’re working with a small group of advertisers in order to quickly gather feedback that we can use to make these products even better. In July, we will begin gradually expanding access to more advertisers with plans to add some of these features into our products later this year,” it said in a blog post.

Meta’s announcement comes after the company’s CTO Andrew Bosworth said last month that the company was looking to use generative AI tech for ads.

“[I] expect we’ll start seeing some of them [commercialization of the tech] this year. We just created a new team, the generative AI team, a couple of months ago; they are very busy. It’s probably the area that I’m spending the most time [in], as well as Mark Zuckerberg and [Chief Product Officer] Chris Cox,” Bosworth told Nikkei Asia in an interview at the time.

Meta had positive quarterly results for Q1 2023. The company beat analyst expectations and posted year-on-year revenue growth for the first time in three quarters. Mark Zuckerberg mentioned that, while the tech giant has started working on different AI tools, it remained committed to metaverse development.

While Meta is releasing some lightweight generative AI features for advertisers, some ad tech startups are heavily leaning into it. Omneky, which presented at TechCrunch Disrupt last year, used OpenAI’s DALLE-2 and GPT-3 to create ads. Movio, which counts IDG, Sequoia Capital China, and Baidu Ventures as its backers, is using generative AI to create marketing videos as well.

More TechCrunch

There’s apparently a lot of demand for an on-demand handyperson. Khosla Ventures and Pear VC have just tripled down on their investment in Honey Homes, which offers up a dedicated…

Khosla Ventures, Pear VC triple down on Honey Homes, a smart way to hire a handyman

TikTok is testing the ability for users to upload 60-minute videos, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Thursday. The feature is available to a limited group of users in select…

TikTok tests 60-minute video uploads as it continues to take on YouTube

Flock Safety is a multi-billion dollar startup that’s got eyes everywhere. As of Wednesday, with the company’s new Solar Condor cameras, those eyes are solar-powered and using wireless 5G networks…

Flock Safety’s solar-powered cameras could make surveilliance more widespread

Since he was very young, Bar Mor knew that he would inevitably do something with real estate. His family was involved in all types of real estate projects, from ground-up…

Agora raises $34M Series B to keep building the Carta for real estate

Poshmark, the social commerce site that lets people buy and sell new and used items to each other, launched a paid marketing tool on Thursday, giving sellers the ability to…

Poshmark’s ‘Promoted Closet’ tool lets sellers boost all their listings at once

Google is launching a Gemini add-on for educational institutes through Google Workspace.

Google adds Gemini to its Education suite

More money for the generative AI boom: Y Combinator-backed developer infrastructure startup Recall.ai announced Thursday it’s raised a $10 million Series A funding round, bringing its total raised to over $12M.…

YC-backed Recall.ai gets $10M Series A to help companies use virtual meeting data

Engineers Adam Keating and Jeremy Andrews were tired of using spreadsheets and screenshots to collab with teammates — so they launched a startup, Colab, to build a better way. The…

Colab’s collaborative tools for engineers line up $21M in new funding

Reddit announced on Wednesday that it is reintroducing its awards system after shutting down the program last year. The company said that most of the mechanisms related to awards will…

Reddit reintroduces its awards system

Sigma Computing, a startup building a range of data analytics and business intelligence tools, has raised $200 million in a fresh VC round.

Sigma is building a suite of collaborative data analytics tools

European Union enforcers of the bloc’s online governance regime, the Digital Services Act (DSA), said Thursday they’re closely monitoring disinformation campaigns on the Elon Musk-owned social network X (formerly Twitter)…

EU ‘closely’ monitoring X in wake of Fico shooting as DSA disinfo probe rumbles on

Wind is the largest source of renewable energy in the U.S., according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, but wind farms come with an environmental cost as wind turbines can…

Spoor uses AI to save birds from wind turbines

The key to taking on legacy players in the financial technology industry may be to go where they have not gone before. That’s what Chicago-based Aeropay is doing. The provider…

Cannabis industry and gaming payments startup Aeropay is now offering an alternative to Mastercard and Visa

Facebook and Instagram are under formal investigation in the European Union over child protection concerns, the Commission announced Thursday. The proceedings follow a raft of requests for information to parent…

EU opens child safety probes of Facebook and Instagram, citing addictive design concerns

Bedrock Materials is developing a new type of sodium-ion battery, which promises to be dramatically cheaper than lithium-ion.

Forget EVs: Why Bedrock Materials is targeting gas-powered cars for its first sodium-ion batteries

Private equity giant Thoma Bravo has announced that its security information and event management (SIEM) company LogRhythm will be merging with Exabeam, a rival cybersecurity company backed by the likes…

Thoma Bravo’s LogRhythm merges with Exabeam in more cybersecurity consolidation

Consumer protection groups around the European Union have filed coordinated complaints against Temu, accusing the Chinese-owned ultra low-cost e-commerce platform of a raft of breaches related to the bloc’s Digital…

Temu accused of breaching EU’s DSA in bundle of consumer complaints

Here are quick hits of the biggest news from the keynote as they are announced.

Google I/O 2024: Here’s everything Google just announced

The AI industry moves faster than the rest of the technology sector, which means it outpaces the federal government by several orders of magnitude.

Senate study proposes ‘at least’ $32B yearly for AI programs

The FBI along with a coalition of international law enforcement agencies seized the notorious cybercrime forum BreachForums on Wednesday.  For years, BreachForums has been a popular English-language forum for hackers…

FBI seizes hacking forum BreachForums — again

The announcement signifies a significant shake-up in the streaming giant’s advertising approach.

Netflix to take on Google and Amazon by building its own ad server

It’s tough to say that a $100 billion business finds itself at a critical juncture, but that’s the case with Amazon Web Services, the cloud arm of Amazon, and the…

Matt Garman taking over as CEO with AWS at crossroads

Back in February, Google paused its AI-powered chatbot Gemini’s ability to generate images of people after users complained of historical inaccuracies. Told to depict “a Roman legion,” for example, Gemini would show…

Google still hasn’t fixed Gemini’s biased image generator

A feature Google demoed at its I/O confab yesterday, using its generative AI technology to scan voice calls in real time for conversational patterns associated with financial scams, has sent…

Google’s call-scanning AI could dial up censorship by default, privacy experts warn

Google’s going all in on AI — and it wants you to know it. During the company’s keynote at its I/O developer conference on Tuesday, Google mentioned “AI” more than…

The top AI announcements from Google I/O

Uber is taking a shuttle product it developed for commuters in India and Egypt and converting it for an American audience. The ride-hail and delivery giant announced Wednesday at its…

Uber has a new way to solve the concert traffic problem

Google is preparing to launch a new system to help address the problem of malware on Android. Its new live threat detection service leverages Google Play Protect’s on-device AI to…

Google takes aim at Android malware with an AI-powered live threat detection service

Users will be able to access the AR content by first searching for a location in Google Maps.

Google Maps is getting geospatial AR content later this year

The heat pump startup unveiled its first products and revealed details about performance, pricing and availability.

Quilt heat pump sports sleek design from veterans of Apple, Tesla and Nest

The space is available from the launcher and can be locked as a second layer of authentication.

Google’s new Private Space feature is like Incognito Mode for Android